Ambition (The Long Haul Book 1) Read online

  AMBITION

  THE LONG HAUL: BOOK 1

  ©Geoff North 2017

  Cover art by Tom Edwards www.tomedwardsdesign.com

  Edited by M.M. Chabot

  Other Books by Geoff North:

  Thawed (CRYERS Book 1)

  Horror (CRYERS Book 2)

  Lawmen (CRYERS Book 3)

  Live it Again

  Make Believe

  Children of Extinction

  Conspiracy Hotel

  Out of Time

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  www.geoffnorth.com

  Table of Contents:

  Ambition History

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Ambition History

  Since the days before mankind could harness fire and paint on cave walls, two important questions have travelled with us throughout the millennia—is there life after death, and are we alone? There remains a big, fat blank after the first question, but in the year 2322 the people of Earth received an answer to the second.

  We were not alone.

  Fifty light years from Earth a planet in the star system 51 Pegasi had intercepted our first radio transmissions sent out through the cold quiet of space more than three and a half centuries earlier. From these primitive initial signals, the citizens of Pega—a name we later gave to this second planet out from 51 Pegasi—inferred that we were a barbaric species, set upon a path of self-annihilation through greed and violence.

  The Pegans began to prepare in the unlikely event that we might make it out to the stars and spread our vile way of life along the way. A single message, a warning, was sent back to Earth.

  We are aware of your existence. We will end you.

  First contact had been made, and the people of Earth didn’t take kindly to the introduction. Mankind had colonized Mars and many of the far moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. Now their sights set out farther. They would journey from their solar system for the first time and engage the Pegans in something they had done a million times.

  War.

  Chapter 1

  You can’t hear sounds in space.

  Hadar Cen knew this was a fact, but the ringing in his ears was saying otherwise. The hit on their starboard wing had thrown the fighter ship into an uncontrollable spin. This added to Hadar’s disorientation, confusing the facts further.

  You can’t hear sounds in space. What you’re hearing is inside this stupid helmet, Hadar reasoned. The ringing began to subside. He could hear something crackling. Someone’s voice emerged from the static. Kraz. He’s talking to me… trying to communicate, seeing if I’m all right.

  There was smoke in the cockpit. A circuit board had fried somewhere, filling Hadar’s view with a swirling blanket of grey. The stupid helmet may have been constrictive, but it was the only thing keeping him alive.

  The crackle cleared and Kraz’s voice came through crystal clear. “Goddamn it, Hadar, recycle your cabin atmosphere! Looks like you’re drowning in the crap from up here.”

  Hadar leaned forward, fanning the smoke away from the pilot console with his gloved hands for a better view of the controls. He found what he was looking for and pressed a button on his lower left side. The smoke was pulled instantly away and sucked out somewhere beneath him.

  “Good job,” Kraz said. “My secondary pilot controls are out… do you still have main control at your end?”

  Most of the console before him was lit in green. “Yes.”

  “Well don’t just sit there. See if you can correct this tumble we’re in. I’m going to puke up my breakfast in about ten more seconds if you don’t.”

  Hadar wasted four of those ten seconds trying to remember where the ship’s trajectory override controls were. On the right, above my head. There were three colored toggles there—red for roll, yellow for yaw, and green for pitch.

  Which one?

  “We’re in a roll,” Kraz snapped. “Pull the red one.”

  Hadar pulled the red toggle and the fighter ship nick-named Bite came out of its dizzying spin. He could see the stars again. They were still tumbling end over end, but at a much-reduced rate of speed. Hadar adjusted their pitch manually and the ship straightened out.

  “Thank you,” Kraz sighed gratefully.

  Hadar made one final navigational adjustment. Bite rolled a few more astral degrees until the planet of Pega came into view directly before him through the canopy cover. It was by far the brightest point of light in the cosmic vista before them. They were close. Too close. He read his instruments for distance. 88.45. Less than a hundred million kilometers away. If he engaged the fighter’s fold drive, they could be there and in orbit in under twenty minutes. But an orbital approach wasn’t part of their mission. They were to remain at what was believed a relatively safe distance to see what kind of planetary defense systems the Pegans had in place. Take pictures. Record any energy signatures beyond Pega and its two moons.

  They hadn’t spotted a damn thing until it was too late.

  Hadar removed the claustrophobic helmet, twisted sideways in the pilot’s seat, and craned his head around for a look at the gunner in the upper turret ten feet directly behind him.

  Kraz Corvus had already taken his head covering off. He was an exceptionally ugly man with a bulbous nose and narrow eyes set too close in the center of his wrinkled old face. He gave Hadar the thumbs up, and the seventy-year old gunner’s voice continued through the ship speakers. “So what did you think of first contact, son? I thought it went kind of shitty myself.”

  Hadar returned the single digit salute. “No more than I expected. We did come out here to fight, after all.”

  There was a pause of crackle before Kraz responded. “Yeah. Part of me was hoping maybe after seven hundred years of just going to war would’ve made the thing obsolete. Wishful thinking, I guess.” Another long pause. “Any word from Nail or Bee?”

  Smoke had begun to accumulate in Hadar’s sm
all cabin again. He circulated the air a second time for a clearer look at the navigation screen represented as a three-dimensional map across the glass canopy over his head. The dull yellow grid lines flickered, a million cubic kilometers of space, but no blinking points of blue appeared. “Nothing on screen, and no audio distress calls. I tried calling Nail just seconds before we were hit. They never responded.”

  “Could be our tracking sensors have malfunctioned. It doesn’t necessarily mean they were destroyed.”

  “I never suggested they had been,” Hadar said testily.

  “Well it’s hard not thinking the worst when the pilot of one is an introverted data storage specialist, and the gunner on the other’s a drunk. Command could’ve chosen better. An unmanned video drone or two could’ve done the job better if you want my opinion.”

  Nail and Bee were the names of the other two fighter ships assigned to their three-ship scouting mission. Hail Vela was the data specialist piloting Bee; his gunner, Kella Sa, was a milun—short for military unit—like Hadar and Kraz. Nail was under the questionable control of Tor Emin, one of Ambition’s two military colonels, a brawling bully and heavy drinker. At least Emin’s pilot, Rastaban Drac—a conceited but competent squadron boss—was piloting the lead ship. None of them, including Colonel Emin and Boss Drac, had any practical experience. It was, after all, their very first war.

  Kraz was half right; video drones could have gathered the information they needed more efficiently, but the Captain and his highest-ranking officers wanted to begin testing their people first-hand, and there was no one amongst Ambition’s crew with first-hand experience.

  “I don’t think the worst happened,” Hadar finally replied. “I’m hoping they either took communications damage, or maybe they headed back for Ambition.”

  “I could see Tor doing something like that… turning and running. That would explain why he didn’t answer your hail before we were attacked. He’s probably back on Ambition drinking his face off at that filthy bar he’s always picking fights in.”

  “You’re a mean old bastard, Kraz. You know that, don’t you?” A small shudder ran through the ship and the crackle returned over the speakers. “Kraz? Did you hear what I said?”

  Hadar turned in his seat and looked back over his shoulder. Kraz’s ugly grinning face wasn’t there. The three-inch thick transparent metal canopy dome wasn’t there. All that remained of the gunner started at mid-chest level. Everything above that was gone, save for an inch or two of severed spinal column poking up over the singed edge of his environmental suit.

  A sliver of silver over ten meters in length appeared on the starboard side of Bite. Hadar had only caught a glimpse of the alien vessel when it had attacked them the first time. It had been more than a thousand meters away then, and Hadar couldn’t thoroughly convince himself the loss of their wing hadn’t been caused from something other than a second sentient force besides themselves out in the stars.

  But he was certain now. The strip of silver revealed more of itself, shifting over like a sharp blade in an endless sea of black, less than twenty meters from Bite’s heavily damaged hull.

  What kind of ship is that?

  There were no wings, no windows, no gun turrets. He couldn’t see a single rivet or join in the strange metallic surface. The silver brightened, started to glow white. The glow expanded and began to envelop Bite. Hadar turned in his seat one last time and saw the remains of his gunner’s body sizzling away in wisps. He could see the white light creeping towards the pilot cockpit, eating away at the tough Mars-refined carbon steel hide of their little fighter.

  Hadar thought he would feel the heat of it before he was incinerated. Instead he felt a terrible cold. He reached for his helmet without looking and clicked it into place over his head with shaking hands. A layer of frost spread across the visor immediately. It cracked down the center and spider-webbed off to the sides. The ringing in his ears returned. It intensified, became a deafening hum that stabbed into his brain.

  Kraz had been right about another thing, Hadar realized as consciousness began to slip away. First contact had been a shitty experience.

  Chapter 2

  Ly Sulafat stared through the glass out into endless black. The captain was sixty-nine years old, and it felt as if every step he’d taken before reaching the observation deck above the bridge had drained him of more life, and he had walked plenty in the last few weeks.

  Captain Sulafat was in excellent health for a man of his age. Ambition’s head of Medical had informed him that he would be able to retain his command for another thirty years so long as he looked after himself and reported in for semi-annual checkups. The average life expectancy onboard Ambition was over one hundred-twenty. That was one of the benefits of living in a disease-free environment. People rarely got sick. A man or woman entering their eighties was just on the outer fringes of middle age.

  “Your life’s just beginning to get interesting,” he muttered out loud.

  The mechanical behemoth, Nash, clomped up the spiral staircase behind him. “Pardon me, Captain?”

  “Something Doctor Gulum told me during my last physical. The man’s full of crap.”

  “The man is competent enough.” Nash stood next to him. “I believe he was trying to convey the importance of Ambition’s mission, and your role in it.”

  “I know what he was trying to do. It didn’t help.”

  “You have done well, Captain. These last few weeks have been most beneficial to your health. The bridge crew on duty this morning is anxiously awaiting your return.”

  Sulafat leaned against the window. He looked up at the seven-foot tall android and concentrated his gaze at the twin black globes protruding halfway out from its white metal face. “Nash… short for Nashira, a star in the constellation Capricornus. Do you know what Nashira means, old friend?”

  “Nashira, the lucky one. Nashira, the bearer of good news,” the robot answered instantly.

  “And the good news you bear today is that my bridge crew is looking forward to seeing me once again.”

  “I thought it would make you happy to know those you left behind before your Long Walk are excited for your return.”

  Long Walk. Captains serving aboard Ambition had each gone on at least one during their commands. It had been a tradition for centuries. This was Sulafat’s fourth.

  “Excited,” Sulafat repeated the word with little enthusiasm. “Anxious is probably more likely.” He could feel his shoulder sliding slowly down the window. Nash’s large titanium fingers gripped gently beneath his elbow and started to bring him back up before Sulafat could do it himself. He felt like some ancient infant being steadied by the robot’s ever-faithful assistance. “I’m alright, quit pampering me.”

  “Don’t feel embarrassed.” The robot’s tone had softened, gone quieter, even though there was no one else on the observation deck with them. “I am the Captain’s right hand. I have been the Captain’s right hand for seven centuries. Your… predicament is far less debilitating than many other captains I have worked with before you.”

  Sulafat looked back into the black sensory-receiving orbs that were meant to represent eyes. “How many captains have you served under?”

  “Twenty-nine. You’re the thirtieth.”

  Another immediate answer. Sulafat knew the answers to his own questions, of course. He had named Nashira at the beginning of his command almost four decades earlier. The crew had shortened Nashira’s star name to Nash—another tradition the men and women serving aboard the Sol Ship Ambition had picked up over five hundred years ago. Everyone was named after a star or a constellation, or a combination of both.

  Ly was given his name after the constellation Lyra from his parents Kep and Eta. The surname Sulafat came from Ly’s great-grandparents a hundred years before the captain had been born. And so it had been year after year, century upon century; people born and named after distant lights in the cosmos. They lived their lives and died amongst the watchful constellation
s.

  Captain Sulafat found it only fitting that a walking, talking machine with human engrams running throughout its cybertronic brain should have a star-given name like all the rest of Ambition’s ten-thousand-person crew. Nashira—Nash—had a much better sound to it than Ambition Automaton Unit 3.

  Sulafat pulled his arm from Nash’s grip. “Thirty captains. Seven centuries. And now our long journey is finally coming to an end. Will you miss it? Will you miss this eternal flight out in space so far away from home?”

  “I was not programmed to miss anything, and Ambition has been the only home I have ever known.”

  “I’ve never called it home. Most people do, but I could never bring myself to. Home is fifty light years behind us. Home is a place I’ve never seen, and never will. And this ship,” he raised his hands in a gesture to encompass its enormity, “…this ship may not be a home to anyone much longer. It’s best not to get attached to things.” Sulafat straightened his black command uniform and clicked his boot heels together. “How do I look?”

  “Like the Captain of Ambition. Strong. Noble. Wise.”

  “Ass-kisser.”

  They headed down the stairs for the bridge.

  Chapter 3

  “We should’ve stayed with them,” Hail Vela announced. “We shouldn’t have run.”

  “We gave it everything we had,” Kella said. “I fired all twelve wing missiles and almost exhausted the laser cannons. It’s hard fighting an enemy you can barely see.”

  Bite and Nail—or what was left of them—were more than eighty-million kilometers behind. The moon of Oread loomed before Hail and Kella now. Its jagged surface of endless mountains and bottomless gouges threatened to chew Bee to shreds and swallow them up. Hail checked the landing coordinates again. They would set the ship down in one of the deeper slits on the moon’s ravaged face and wait for Ambition to catch up. He set Bee on auto-land and pulled his hands from the helm control handles. The ship made an adjustment. The stars behind Oread disappeared as the small ship dove down toward the mountains.

  “How do we know Ambition will even bother to look for us?” Hail asked. “You saw the hit Hadar and Kraz took before we jumped into fold drive. If Nail took the same kind of damage, there won’t be anything left for them to search for. They’ll probably think all three fighters were lost.”